


abandoned

by blackorchids



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fred Weasley Dies, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, he felt angry at his twin. But mostly, he just felt empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	abandoned

**Author's Note:**

> first place in SpringSinger19's One-Night-Stand one-shot challenge over on the hpff forums (still not over it and it's been ages)!

It was strange, to him, that he’d never noticed her before this very moment.

He’d seen her around before—obviously, seeing as she was one of his sister’s two best friends, and, after the war, everyone just seemed to _congregate_ in one spot, as if they were afraid that if they left one another alone, for just one second, life as they knew it would vanish into thin air.

George remembered her from school. The mysterious blonde girl that looked far too delicate for her own good. The one who lived in her own world that no one ever bothered to try and open up and let pour out.

Sometimes, her world, her fantasies, her dreams and her imagined creatures and her _self_ slipped through what George likened to an old box.

The box was ancient and worn, clearly loved, but also clearly having had once seen better days. It was filled with cracks, this box. And this box containing her world, sometimes let out a bit of her world for everyone else to see because a breaking box didn’t really have a whole lot of support and it couldn’t be expected to keep such large amazing wonders tamed within its confines for too long.

After the war, he’d moved back in with his parents. He was completely unable to face sleeping in the room that he and his brother had shared above their beloved joke shop for so many months.

George was terrified of the empty that the room would be. There would no longer be any Fred sleeping in the tiny bed on the other side of the room. There would no longer be any Fred waking him up in the middle of the night, his eyes wide with excitement at a new idea.

There would no longer be any Fred to guide him through this life.

Now, George was on his own, abandoned by his twin brother. Left alone to stumble blindly through this broken society without the unrelenting lead that his twin had always provided.

He’d bumped into her many times during his daily mopes around the crowded rooms of his childhood home. Every day, at the exact same time, he would leave the dark chambers of his dusty old bedroom and take a walk throughout the house. It was his way of making sure that everyone knew he had not yet killed himself in his room, where he spent every other hour of the day curled up on his bed, his back to Fred’s.

He loved that room, in a sick, twisted sort of way. George likened the abandoned feeling of it, the dust that lay on every surface, the uncomfortable feeling of the beds that hadn’t been slept in for ages to himself. The room had been abandoned when the twins had gone off to do bigger, better things. And now George was abandoned while Fred had gone off to a bigger, better place.

Sometimes, he felt angry at his twin. But mostly, he just felt empty.

Her presence was one of the few he found himself not minding. She radiated a sort of sense of understanding. She didn’t pity him, and she did not speak to him. She just _knew_ exactly how he felt. She knew that he did not want to be talked to.

He did not want to be comforted. Yet, somehow, with her knowingness, and her managing to follow him around during his daily walk in such a way that George wondered if she really _were_ following him around or if he was just making something out of coincidences, he felt himself comforted anyway.

And he was strangely okay with it.

*

The first words she’d ever spoken directly to him were sudden. He hadn’t been expecting anyone to say anything to him—the scowl that had taken up residence on his face while he made the familiar trek around the house warded anyone and everyone away from him.

But, of course, she spoke to him as if she didn’t even notice the scowl on his face. As if she didn’t notice the hostility he was _radiating_.

“It’s okay, you know,” she murmured to him, looking up at him with wide, silvery eyes that seemed less misty and distant than they ever had before, her long blonde hair pulled up in a messy bun atop her head.

“What’s okay?” he’d responded gruffly, his voice hoarse. He absentmindedly wondered when the last time he’d spoken was. It seemed eons ago.

“It’s okay,” she repeated wistfully, “To be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” he snapped, irritated with her all-too-correct assumptions.

“It’s okay to be sad,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “It’s okay to feel abandoned—to feel as if all hope in the world is lost forever.”

He stared at the short blonde girl in front of him, and she matched his gaze evenly. All too soon, she blinked, and the mist was back in her eyes, and she walked away from him, humming a tune unknown to everyone but her.

And George stared after her as she left. Annoyed and confused and awed all at once.

There weren’t many encounters between the two of them. Even fewer were the ones in which she spoke to him, the mist clearing from her eyes for just the few seconds she looked into his own, telling him the exact words he needed to hear with her clear, quiet voice that seemed to hold more pain than someone like Luna Lovegood should ever have had to know.

George felt the annoyance and the confusion and the awe eating away at his insides, tripling in strength every time she departed a few of her carefully-chosen words upon him. He wondered how she managed to say the perfectly right things to him at the perfectly right times. But that, too, added to the mystery that he supposed she would always be.

He had no idea how it happened. They’d been walking the grounds around the Burrow. Not together, but not separated. He’d made the mistake of glancing in the distance, towards the hill that he could barely make out in the horizon of the setting sun that filled the skies with deep reds and rich purples and splashes of playful pinks.

He’d made the mistake of looking towards the hill upon where his brother was buried.

George hadn’t yet visited the grave. He couldn’t bring himself to set his eyes on the white marble he knew his mother had chosen for his brother. It was a sorry replica of the boy who he’d been attached to by the hip since before they were born.

He felt his breath halt in his throat. He felt his heart falter in its thrumming pattern. And for a second, he felt like he could almost make out the headstone that would forever mark the fact that his brother lay dead under the earth while he, George, walked on the grassed grounds.

But somehow, her small hand had found its way into his own, the feeling of her squeezing his fingers gently managing to start up his heartbeat and get him breathing once more.

She was slowly leading him in the direction of the sunset. She was taking him to his brother’s gravestone.

He did not know how long they stayed there, his eyes fixed on the words carved elegantly into the beautiful marble, the tears in his vision making it impossible to make out what they said. Her hand never left his own, and she merely stood there for him, unspeaking, as the sun finally disappeared behind the horizon and the sky faded to an inky black.

And then she was leading him home, pulling him along the uneven path with an eerie sense of sureness that made him wonder how many times she’d been to the small cemetery atop the hill. There had been other headstones, and George vowed to one day examine them all.

But for now, he was preoccupied with her leading him quietly up the stairs of the Burrow. The house was unusually quiet, and it registered in his mind that it was far later than he’d imagined, and she was opening his bedroom door making him wonder exactly how she knew which was his own. Luna was leading him to his bed, and she sat him down on it gently and knelt to remove his shoes.

He stared at her as if through a telescope from miles away, feeling distant and strange as she merely looked at him for one blazing moment before rising to her feet and exiting the bedroom, closing the door silently behind her.

That was the first night he slept soundly.

Every single night without fail, she led him to his brother’s headstone, her fingers warmth feeling, to George, as if they were the only things keeping him grounded on this earth, unable to float up to the skies and see his brother again.

He found it unnerving that, _somehow_ , he didn’t exactly want to leave the world just yet.

She never watched him as he stared at his brother’s grave, always looking into the distance with a strange sort of smile on her pretty face.

Sometimes, he unwittingly took a break from gazing blindly at the marble in front of him to watching her, a wondering expression uncurling over his own face, unyielding fascination blazing in his eyes.

He couldn’t help it though—everything about this girl was like a drug. And George could find himself slowly getting addicted.

His excuse for what happened next was that he had no idea what was going on when it took place.

She’d lead him back to his room, her hand leaving his and making him feel oddly cold. Like every other night, she knelt and removed his shoes slowly, first the left, and then the right, before placing them at the foot of his bed. She rose to her full height once more, and gave him her regular burning look before turning to leave.

George was just as surprised as she when his hand shot out and took in it her own, preventing her from walking away from him.

She let her silver gaze trailed from their entwined hands, up his arm and he watched as her eyes dragged painfully slowly across his face before they finally locked with his own.

They stared at each other for many long, scorching moments before she gently shook her hand free from his vice-like grip.

She was about to walk away again when he took her hand once more, twining his fingers with her own, holding it much more gently.

“Don’t,” he whispered, his voice cracking from lack of use. He cleared it and tried again. “I—don’t leave.”

He gave her hand a tug and suddenly she was far closer to him than she’d ever been before, looking down from her standing position at him seated on the tiny bed. He hesitantly reached up and brushed a few of her haphazard blonde waves from her face, cupping her face with utmost care as he slowly brought her head level to his own.

Neither one of them ever paused to wonder what they were doing as their lips finally met in a careful kiss, the waters being tested with much more caution than either of them had ever used before.

George separated the two of them, leaning his forehead against her own, his blue eyes gazing deep into her silver eyes. They were clear and bright, shining with undisguised need, and it was all he needed to pull her lips onto his once more, their second kiss much more primal than the first.

It was burning and passionate and fast and hungry and he had no idea someone could feel like that just from a simple kiss and she was already leaning into him, pushing him back onto the bed, her hands tangling in his red hair.

He let his tongue run across her bottom lip quickly, and she did not waste time in letting it enter; letting it explore every secret crevice of her mouth, just like he wanted to explore every secret of hers.

Emotions that had been dulled since his brother had died so many months ago had been awaked and intensified as he pulled her slim frame closer to his own, and suddenly, their clothes were disappearing, landing softly on the floor near his bed.

Hot skin met hot skin and limbs tangled with one another’s and suddenly he was on top and she gasped and her legs tightened around his waist, her fingernails digging into his back as they became one in a fit of explosive, uncontrollable passion.

And suddenly, George didn’t feel quite so alone anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this way back at the end of july 2011;
> 
>  
> 
> _Right. This is for SpringSinger19's One-Night-Stand one-shot challenge, and I was given George and Luna. I have no idea if this will even get close to winning, because, well, it's. . .odd. . .but I really enjoyed writing it. Never before had I pictured George/Luna, but, I guess anything can happen. I hope you liked it, either way, and please leave some constructive critique, because I don't usually write like this. :D_
> 
>  
> 
> still kind of like this one, actually
> 
>  
> 
> come talk to me or prompt me on tumblr [@rosalinesbenvolio](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!!


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